Natalie Breuel grew up going to the shooting range with her father in Briarcliff Manor, New York. She knows how to fire a gun, how to properly clean and handle one. She enjoys it.
A freshman at Penn, Breuel is also the founder of Penn Against Gun Violence, a student advocacy group which has garnered national attention in the last couple months. A gun user advocating for more gun control? To Breuel, it’s not a contradiction; it’s common sense.
“Everyone sees us and thinks ‘Oh, they’re trying to take our guns away,’ but that’s not true,” Breuel says. “Owning a gun is a responsibility and it’s not a responsibility that everyone can handle.”
Since October, Penn Against Gun Violence has congregated 30 students for a two-pronged approach to creating change in the level of gun violence in Philadelphia: awareness and advocacy. Among the group’s issues are closing loopholes in the 1994 Brady Bill that have allowed some gun sales to thwart background checks. Pres. Obama’s executive order last week addressed this by calling for universal background checks and for strengthening the relationship between mental health agencies and government. Still, the issue isn’t going anywhere. (In December, after Pres. Obama called for a restriction on assault weapons, gun sales hit a two-decade high.)
“Everyone sees us and thinks ‘Oh, they’re trying to take our guns away,’ but that’s not true,” Breuel says. “Owning a gun is a responsibility and it’s not a responsibility that everyone can handle.”
Breuel’s group has also been working with grassroots organizations and survivor networks in Philadelphia to lobby for state legislation that would allow the city to enact stronger gun laws. This spring, Penn Against Gun Violence plans to collaborate with other Penn student groups and student groups from Drexel and Temple on various initiatives, including a march to end gun violence in Philadelphia.
Brueul started Penn Against Gun Violence after a threat against Philadelphia-area universities posted online on October 4th forced the criminology major and many other Philly students to choose between their education and their safety. Waiting out the threat in her dorm room, Breuel realized she no longer could shut herself off from the gun violence that faces Philadelphia and the nation.
“I was just sitting in my room thinking, I’m at this amazing school and I’m not in class right now and that’s such a problem,” Breuel says. “There should be nothing stopping me from getting my education and I shouldn’t have to choose between safety and education. A lot of people in Philadelphia do that every day.”
Until October, Breuel had spent years avoiding the realities of gun violence. A sophomore in high school in 2012, she lived an hour away from Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 first-graders were shot and killed in their classroom that December. She recalls getting off her school bus, and reading the news from Sandy Hook Elementary. “I saw the faces of the children and completely broke down,” Breuel says. “I went up to my room, cried myself to sleep and thought this was the worst thing ever.”
Afterwards, Breuel says, she stopped paying attention to the mass shootings that followed one after another. “I think a lot of people do that,” she says. “It hurts too much to care about what’s happening. People don’t want to see the faces of the kids. But you have to.”
But the October threat on Philadelphia universities—which followed the shooting death of nine people at Umpqua Community College in Oregon—forced Breuel to feel the terror that comes along with gun violence. “This is so much more real than it ever was to me. I’ve been ignoring it for way too long,” Breuel says.
Breuel knows it will take more than a march through town—or a gathering of college students—to really make a dent in the prevalence of gun violence around her. But she is part of a larger movement, from the President to presidential nominees to a growing number of activist groups that are increasingly demanding changes in the way we approach guns in this country.
“I was just sitting in my room thinking, I’m at this amazing school and I’m not in class right now and that’s such a problem,” Breuel says. “There should be nothing stopping me from getting my education and I shouldn’t have to choose between safety and education. A lot of people in Philadelphia do that every day.”
Susan Sorenson, a Penn professor who has done extensive research into the prevention of violence, says all types of advocacy are needed for real progress on this issue.
“There are different domains that are needed to move an issue on the policy agenda,” says Sorenson, a faculty advisor to Breuel’s group “One of those is scientific research, which is what I do; another is personal experience, with survivors,”And then there’s what the population of the country itself wants and people organizing together to affect change—and that’s where Penn Against Gun Violence comes in.”
Breuel has always wanted to have a public service career. She is currently a volunteer firefighter in her hometown, for which she had to undergo active shooter training. She also is a tutor at Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center, through the Petey Greene prisoner assistance program and attends weekly bible study.
As a student, a volunteer and a gun user, Breuel has seen both sides of the gun control issue. That, she says, has led her to her position: That owning a gun is equal to the responsibility of driving a car. People must acquire a license to drive a car, go through different checks to insure they are able to safely operate the vehicle, acquire insurance before they can go out on the streets. Those same checks should be there for guns. That is something she thinks the country is ready for.
“We are reaching a tipping point,” Breuel said. “People care about gun violence.”
Ed. note: A previous version of this story said that Breuel owned a gun and had shot a deer. She has only used a family member’s gun at a shooting range.
Header photo via Natalie Breuel